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A 500 year old work of art believed to be by Leonardo da Vinci and depicting Jesus Christ sold in New York for $450.3 million, smashing a new art auction record, Christie's said. The whopping price dwarfed the previous record for the most expensive piece of art sold at auction, set at $179.4 million for Pablo Picasso's "The Women of Algiers (Version O)" by Christie's in 2015. The auction house says "Salvator Mundi" or "Savior of the World" is one of fewer than 20 Da Vinci paintings in existence that are generally accepted as from the Renaissance master's own hand. (AP Photo)
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All other known paintings by Da Vinci are held in museum or institutional collections. (AP Photo)
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Dated back by the auction house to around 1500, the oil on panel sold after 18 minutes of frenzied bidding in a historic sale, the star lot of the November art season in the US financial capital.(AP Photo)
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Whoops and applause rippled through the showroom as the bids quickly escalated into unchartered territory, led by rivals on the telephone. (AP Photo)
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"An historic moment here. We'll wait," said auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen in a brief pause in bidding at $300 million. He eventually hammered the painting at $450 million. The final price came to $450.3 million including the buyer's premium. (AP Photo)
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The painting shows Jesus Christ with one hand raised, the other holding a glass sphere.(AP Photo)
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Da Vinci was born in the Republic of Florence, in present-day Italy, in 1452 and died in France in 1519. There are fewer than 20 of his paintings in existence. (Reuters Photo)
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In 1958, it was sold at auction in London for $60, BBC reported. By then the painting was generally reckoned to be the work of a follower of Leonardo and not the work of Leonardo himself. (AP Photo)
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One critic even described the surface of the painting to be "inert, varnished, lurid, scrubbed over and repainted so many times that it looks simultaneously new and old". (AP Photo)
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